In the late thirties of last century there was a crowd of amused onlookers and press men watching the amusing sight of a few pink skinned British officers accompanying Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer, who was valiantly handling a broom trying to clean the road in front of the Hyder Ali ramparts in Madras. A posse of cleaners were on the rampart cleaning the night soil and sprucing the place. Articles and photos were published in the papers on the clean up Madras drive initiated by the Corporation to make Madras a clean, hygienic city. We children used to play on the ramparts and the very next day found every thing was back to normal!
Fast forward fifty years on a few friends were on trek in Tanzania. We climbed up to the second camp of Mount Kilimanjaro. The loo in these camps are situvated a little away. The doors had a placard ‘Please keep this clean after you finish. ‘ It was as clean as the one in the hotel !. On our return we landed ar Bombay International airport. All the loos were filthy and you had a problem avoiding the night soil and finally no water or toilet paper. A modern well designed Loo waiting for the cleaners!
On to 21st century. Chennai International airport. The loo has half a foot of water on the floor with leaky pipe dripping away. Toilets in Metro rail stations dont work. The approach to some Metro statios is filthy. Yet there are areas which are kept cean. Hygine and cleaniness varies from state to state. In localities people take a lead in keeping their clean and help civivc authorities. In others they add to the problem.
The central government has come with a novel cess on taxpayers called Swachh Bharat Abhiyan- Clean India Mission to tackle this age old problem on war footing in short time.
In such an unfortunate scenario governments attempt at changing social behaviour is not likely to succeed. Social changes have are initiated by societies at their pace. The dictatorial regimes like the Soviets and the Nazis failed.
Building toilets in schools and villages is very laudable but if they have no water, no drainage and people are not taught to use them and leave them clean for the next person you are back to square one. This where the whole scheme misses the point.
Unfortunately we have people to do these dirty jobs still and leave it to them. A topdown approach to problems like this is unlikely to work and it can only done with patience at the grass root level . Our governments at the center and state level have become clientistic to win the favour voters by free TVs, subsidised articles and on a higher level by schemes like this with the voters own money leaving pockets of excellance amidst amidst sqalor around.
There is story of Gandhi( the real one) ,when in South Africa asking his wife Kasturibhai to clean up the latines which the guests had used. Kasturibhai with her native wisdom is supposed to have replied ‘ Ask the guests to clean it if they have left it dirty. Or clean them yourself’. Well there you have it in a nutshell.
Raja Ramakrishnan
14th August 2016
Very true Appa. The Chinese have tried top down and it has not really worked - they still pass more than a few things in public.
Some cultures even within India are cleaner than others. Punjabis are generally cleaner than Haryanvis and Malayalees are cleaner than Tamils:)-. Khasis are far cleaner than Assamese
Posted by: Vijay | August 14, 2016 at 04:41 AM
Raja,
From Barcelona to Chennai, there was not enough time at Brussels to go to the lounge so we had to use the loo at Brussels airport after a flight had just landed from New York with a planeload of mostly south Indians, who had made a mess of the toilets, including the ladies loos.
The same people will not dare to do this in Singapore.
Cheers,
Ness.
Posted by: Ness Pesikaka | August 14, 2016 at 06:40 AM
Good one! The million rupee question is how do we go about inculcating this attitude? Personal cleanliness is a huge thing for us, but anything outside our own zone is fair game for littering and filth. We cannot blame the climate or poverty - we saw how spotlessly clean Cambodia - which was both hot and poor - was. As Ness very correctly pointed out, we wouldn't dare try any of this in Singapore. And you are absolutely right Appa - as long as we have someone to clean up our mess, we will continue to make it. After all, there are no consequences!
Posted by: Kamini | August 14, 2016 at 09:35 AM
It's a caste thing....many years ago having a conversation with an American woman married to a Tamil gentleman...she had spent much of her time studying the culture, history and language of this region..I had much respect for her knowledge..during our conversation we talked about why our public spaces are so dirty, why it's acceptable to throw your garbage outside someone else's wall, why men could stop their cars on Besant Avenue and urinate against the T.S wall (not drivers but owners of the cars).....well her explanation was the upper classes make the mess, the lowers classes clean up.....that's their role in life..and our myths, our religion perpetuate this philosophy....caste is a curse on society but oh! boy does it suit people!!! Kasturba bahen had it right.
Posted by: radha | August 16, 2016 at 02:30 AM